Palm Pre coming to Canada this year

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The Pre is being rolled out in the United States through Sprint-Nextel during the first half of 2009. ((Jae C. Hong/Associated Press))

A new Palm smart phone with both a touch screen and full slide-out keyboard will be available in Canada later this year.

Palm Canada and Bell Mobility announced Wednesday in a news release that the Palm Pre will launch in Canada in the second half of 2009 via a deal that will make the phone available only to customers of Bell Mobility's 3G network.

Palm Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., had announced in January that the Pre would be rolled out in the United States in the first half of 2009 through Sprint-Nextel.

That announcement was made at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where the phone was unveiled, garnering a significant amount of press and attention.

At the time, Palm chief executive Ed Colligan said the company had been working on the new phone and operating system for years and it was a way of "relaunching Palm to some extent." Leading up to the Pre's debut, the company had struggled to be noticed amid competitors such as Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices.

Palm said the device is named the Pre because it's designed to try to anticipate its user's wishes.

The phone is being used by Palm to debut its new WebOS mobile platform, which is designed to run multiple applications at once and includes features such as the ability to link contact lists from multiple sources such as Google, Outlook and Facebook and combine multiple calendars.

The Pre has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a touch screen, and a gesture pad below the screen that can be used to navigate menus and programs without touching the screen, as well as standard smart phone features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, carrier-assisted and stand-alone GPS and a three-megapixel camera.